Passing In The Night
by ConcertiGrossi
Summary: An acquaintance born of sheer chance. Barbossa/Anamaria, written for a fic challenge on livejournal.


**Disclaimer:** Not Mine

**With thanks to rexluscus on livejournal for the beta.**

**Author's Note:** This is a Barbossa/Anamaria written for a fic challenge. I tried seven ways from Sunday, but I couldn't quite make any nookie work without thousands and thousands more words. Consider this a prelude to a possible romance.

* * *

Hector Barbossa stared inland. The stars shone brightly; they were the only cue he had to tell where the sky ended and the trees began. He looked over at his partner in the yet-unknown crime."And just what kind of cargo will we be carrying tonight?"

"We agreed no questions," said Gershom tersely.

Barbossa swore. This was decidedly not how he liked to operate; he had made it his policy to always know how far into the noose he was sticking his neck, but he'd had a run of bad luck lately, and the offering price had been too good.

Far, far too good, he realized now.

Gershom continued to watch the treeline.

"We said midnight. That's come and gone…"

"I paid you well for this, pirate, now hold your tongue!"

They waited again for a time in silence, when a movement at the edge of the beach caught his eye. A teenaged girl was running towards them, with two younger siblings in tow. Another figure hove into view behind them: an older woman, carrying a young boy in her arms.

Bugger. He was helping slaves to escape.

While he was entirely ambivalent on the morality of the trade in human livestock, he was not at all ambivalent about the penalties for those caught helping them out of bondage. There had been a string of breakouts in these parts recently, and the patrollers were cracking down.

Barbossa valued his own neck pretty highly.

The woman stumbled, and Gershom ran to her. "Get into the boat!" he cried, as the girl passed him.

"_Oui, Papa_!" she yelled back without breaking her stride.

Barbossa heard the baying of hounds in the distance, and more forms began to materialize further down the coastline. One stopped, and shots began to ring out.

"Bloody buggering hell!" Barbossa ran to the launch. They'd certainly seen his ship; if they were working with any kind of _gendarmes maritimes _(and, on this part of the coast, they almost surely were) reinforcements would be along any second. "We've got to go! Now!"

Gershom half-carried the woman and the child to the boat. As he thrust them on board, more shots were fired. Plumes of sand, kicked up by the bullets, peppered the boat. Barbossa vaulted himself on board.

"Get in the boat, Gershom, let's go!"

The seconds passed like hours as Gershom took account of the men approaching them.

"We've got to get out of here!" yelled the pirate.

Gershom, once he came to his fateful decision, wasted no time. He kissed the woman passionately, then grabbed the rifle. "Get them to safety, Barbossa!" he yelled over his shoulder and ran towards their attackers.

"NO!" the woman screamed, and tried to grab at him.

"Get her down! Push off and get us out of here!" The sailors dragged her back into the boat per their captain's orders, and pulled at the oars knowing their lives depended on it.

Barbossa watched the shore as the unevenly matched battle played out. Gershom took out half the patrol before he finally fell – Barbossa had to admit that he was an uncommonly brave man. The woman keened as she hid her children's faces, keeping their eyes averted from their father's brutal end.

Except the eldest, Barbossa noted. The girl sat in her seat like she'd been turned to stone and witnessed the murder with the purest look of cold hatred he'd ever seen.

He never forgot it.

------

Anamaria hated Tortuga.

She hated the lecherous men and the cheap, tawdry whores. She hated the run-down buildings and the noisome streets. She hated the lousy taverns and their flea-ridden beds.

She liked the rum, though. And, as bad as it was, Tortuga was better than anyplace else. Here she was absolutely free.

She'd been here for a year. Her mother had taken them to Hispaniola, after their escape. She hadn't thought much of it, and her opinion of the place only fell further when her mother remarried. There was a tumultuous fight, and she left. (She swore always that her mother had just exchanged one form of bondage for another; her mother always swore that Anamaria couldn't accept a new man in her father's place. The truth was, as it usually is, somewhere in between.) She'd fetched up here, taken a job at "The Faithful Bride," and spent her nights dreaming of the sea.

-----

"What'll ya have?" she asked, sizing him up.

He squinted up at her. "Rum."

"Coin first."

Her instincts were correct: he didn't have any. "I left it in my other… don't I know you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about…"

"You're Gershom's daughter!" he exclaimed, and fixed a wide grin. "How about a drink for the man what delivered you from bondage?"

"Papa saved for five years to get the money to pay you. I don't owe you nothing."

Barbossa sneered. "And this is what your father died for, is it? So his eldest daughter could be a barmaid in a Tortugan whorehouse?"

She threw a drink in his face, and called over the heavies. They disposed of him handily.

-----

She stumbled across him later, curled up behind the pig byre, and very nearly left him there. He reeked of pig shit and drink; apparently, someone had been less fussy about serving him than she.

Or less attentive.

She should have walked on, she knew, but she remembered him well from that fateful night, and it weighed on her conscience.

She dragged him to his feet and doused him under the water-pump until he swore and shouted out threats against her person and family. When the coast was clear, she sneaked him up to her room.

Whereupon, he promptly passed out on her bed.

She sighed, and made herself a pallet on the floor.

-----

In other circumstances, this might have ended differently. There was affinity and mutual respect, and, at the base of it all, a desperate, shared need to be entirely unfettered.

However, in the morning, he awoke with a terrible headache and, after glancing at his roommate, an unfamiliar sense of shame. He couldn't remember what had happened, and surely wasn't about to ask.

"Do you like that work?" he asked.

She snorted by way of an answer.

"Why don't you do something else?"

"Do what? I'll be no man's whore, and I've had my life's fill of maiding."

"Do you want to go to sea?" he asked. It was a shot in the dark, but something in her eyes made him ask.

"And what if I did?" She turned defensive.

"The _Toro_ needs crew. Tell Garland I sent you, and you'll get a place."

"Why would he give a woman a place on his crew?"

"He ain't a he."

She laughed; it was the first time she'd done anything but scowl.

Without much further ceremony, he got up and made to leave. There was more that needed to be said, but he hadn't the words and neither did she. She stopped him before he made it out the door.

"You lost your ship?" she asked.

"Would I be here if I hadn't?" he asked in reply.

"I hear Captain Jack Sparrow is looking for a first mate."

He shuddered. He'd sworn he'd never work for, with, over, under or near Teague's son, but then, he'd sworn a lot of things in the old days. "Thankee."

"Just so we're clear: I owe you nothing."

He tipped his tattered hat to her. "I'd have it no other way," he said, and walked out of her life.


End file.
